2018 Candidate Statements

Click on the links below to read the statements from candidates for each office. The statements submitted by candidates address the following issues: (1) what each candidate hopes to achieve and contribute to the Society if elected; (2) what activities and experiences qualify the candidates for the positions for which they are standing. Candidates were also asked for a listing of three representative publications and links to online CVs or the text of brief resumes.

President-Elect

John F. Miller

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, MA in Comparative Literature (1975); Ph.D. in Classical Philology (1979)

Arthur F. and Marian W. Stocker Professor of Classics, University of Virginia

Statement

Of the many challenges that today face the SCS, I would single out three:

1. Our metamorphosis from American Philological Association into Society for Classical Studies sprang largely from a wish to expand our outreach to the general public. The enhanced website in particular was to be the ‘go-to’ place for anyone with a question about the classical world and/or who wants to follow developments in the field. We are making strides towards that goal with the redesigned website and the hard work of the social media team, and further brainstorming will doubtless result in continued improvement—for outreach as well as in better informing ourselves. Another strategy towards classical outreach that can be more vigorously pursued is collaboration with the regional and state organizations. Arguably the most effective outreach is local, and we have a lot to learn from groups operating in their neighborhoods. CAMWS, for instance, makes a tremendous impact through its Committee for the Promotion of Latin, a simple operation that awards funds to worthwhile projects in individual schools and communities. SCS could earmark funds for similar efforts. Our new office, the state legate, if implemented in the right spirit, can lead to productive collaboration between our national organization and local constituencies. At any rate, a closer partnership with the regional groups can yield great dividends in outreach to teachers, students, parents, and the public at large.

2. Diversity remains a colossal challenge for the profession, given the pipeline issues for racial and ethnic minorities and the fundamental changes in students’ and parents’ attitudes towards education since the recession of 2008. As VP for Professional Matters not long ago I helped the SCS President appoint the members of our first Committee on Diversity in the Profession. It was encouraging to see that committee’s initial meetings bristling with fresh approaches to the problems at hand. As promising ideas emerge, we need to be prepared to invest in them. Moreover, a healthy SCS needs to invite participation from all segments of the membership in running the Society, including colleagues at non-Ph.D. institutions. While the Nominating Committee will have this as one of its concerns, the President can have a major impact with the numerous committee appointments to be made during the presidential year.

3. The continued vitality of our annual program is essential for the Society to flourish—financially, intellectually, in terms of fellowship. This has always been so, but becomes even more important as we less and less conduct job interviews at the convention. The experiments of recent years continue to enrich the program. A new VP for Program is about to be elected. Perhaps this is a good time to reconsider the size and structure of the program. Beyond the program itself, the SCS will benefit from even closer coordination with the AIA, our partner in the joint meeting, and by opening up collaboration with our other sister organizations at the national and international level. This is in line with our ambition to be heard in the larger contemporary conversation about the importance of the humanities and the role of education in society.

Qualifications and Experience

SCS/APA service:

Vice-President for Professional Matters (2013–17)

Director, Classics Advisory Service (2010–13)

Vice-President for Program (2002–06)

Digital Latin Library Working Group (2012–14)

Task Force on Development (2005)

Committee on Publications (1998–2002)

Nominating Committee (1994–97)

Committee on Placement (1982–85)

ad-hoc committees on convention program, archives, and outreach to community colleges

Alternate Delegate to FIEC (2018– )

Other relevant service:

President, CAMWS (2000)

Chair, UVA Department of Classics (1999–2014)

Editor, Classical Journal (1991­–98)

President, Classical Association of Virginia (2002–2004)

Three Representative Publications

  • Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets. Cambridge 2009.
  • A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid. Wiley/Blackwell 2014 (co-editor with C. Newlands).
  • Ovid’s Elegiac Festivals: Studies in the Fasti. Frankfurt & New York 1991.


Sheila Murnaghan

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ph.D.

Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek, The University of Pennsylvania

Statement

As President I would be most concerned to advance the Society’s ongoing evolution in response to changing ideas of what it means to be a classicist. In the present moment, this involves recognizing and supporting a broader range of career paths inside and outside of academic settings; promoting scholarship that embraces the reception of classical antiquity as well as the Greco-Roman world and that takes full advantage of new research tools; finding opportunities to advocate publicly for informed and open-minded attention to the past; and building connections to new centers of classical study around the world.

Qualifications and Experience

I have been a professional classicist for over thirty years, teaching and writing about both classical literature and classical reception and helping to train future members of the profession. I have a substantial record of SCS service, including the Nominating Committee, the Committee on Professional Matters, the Committee on the Classical Tradition, the Outreach Committee, an adhoc Task Force to review the program of the Annual Meeting, the Board of Directors, and the Goodwin Award Committee.

Three Representative Publications

  • Euripides’ Medea, Norton Critical Edition (New York 2018)
  • Childhood and the Classics: Britain and America, 1850-1965, with Deborah H. Roberts (Oxford 2018)
  • “The Arms of Achilles: Tradition and Mythmaking in Sophocles’ Philoctetes,” in Arum Park, ed., Resemblance, Reality, and Tradition in Greek Thought (New York 2016) 116-29

CV: https://www.classics.upenn.edu/people/sheila-murnaghan

Vice President for Program

Cynthia Damon

M.A. Boston College (1984), Ph.D. Stanford (1990)

Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Statement

My principal aspirations are those of prior Program Committees: to assemble a program that provides professional enrichment for our diverse membership and to use the time and space available in such a way as to facilitate participation by attendees in a rich variety of sessions and events. Modifications will reflect the trends affecting attendance, especially the diminishing role of the Annual Meeting in the job market and the increasing importance of opportunities for informed discussion of the challenges confronting our field, the humanities, and higher education in general.

Qualifications and Experience

My relevant experience is simply this: I have attended the Annual Meeting in most of the past 30 years and contributed to a variety of its components as speaker, seminar organizer, presider, committee member, task force member, TAPA editor, department chair, and board member. Some highlights include organizing a joint AIA/APA seminar on the senatus consultum de Gnaeo Pisone patre (1991, organized with Sarolta Takács), a seminar on Critical editions of classical texts in the 21st century (2008), and the SCS/CA panel "W(h)ither philology? (2015), and serving as panelist in sessions on Editing Servius (2004), Cicero as reader and interpreter (2007, honoring D. R. Shackleton Bailey), The problematic text (2015), and Digital textual editions and corpora (2018).

Three Representative Publications

  • C. Iuli Caesaris commentariorum libri III de bello ciuili. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
  • Translation of Tacitus, Annals. London: Penguin Classics, 2013.
  • Tacitus, Histories 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

CV: http://www.classics.upenn.edu/people/cynthia-damon

Carole Newlands

Ph.D. University of California Berkeley

Professor of Classics, College of Arts and Sciences Professor of Distinction, University of Colorado Boulder

Statement

In the past few years many positive changes have been made to the SCS program and to the format for submitting and handling abstracts, and I would like to see these continue and flourish. If elected, I would first of all aim to work towards an even more active exchange of ideas in our program, within a context that values diversity in theme and points of view. For instance, amidst the many competing demands of the SCS annual meeting, time for dedicated discussion in the form of workshops (including pedagogical workshops that bring together teachers of all levels), panels, seminars, and affiliated group panels should be further encouraged. The single-author session could take a more polemical approach, for instance by linking the author to a pressing theme or set of questions. I would also like to see more interdisciplinary sessions and closer collaboration with the AIA as well as with fellow institutions abroad. Second, a major challenge for our profession is outreach; the program should include events that attract the public at large and draw international attention. ‘Break-out’ sessions at each annual meeting could address the changing role of Classics and the Humanities in education today not only in the USA but internationally. Finally, the program committee could pay particular attention to scheduling. Too often many of us have found panels on similar themes/authors conflict in time; those of us who work in less ‘mainstream’ areas find that our sessions are quite often at the worst possible times. If elected program director, I would work towards ensuring that there is equity in scheduling. Overall, I would like to ensure that the annual meeting’s program is inclusive both of exciting new trends in Classics and of the core subjects and approaches of the discipline; it should also be inclusive of all interested in this rich interdisciplinary field.

Qualifications and Experience

My service to the APA/SCS began with my membership of the Lionel Pearson committee (1993-6). I was subsequently appointed to the Nominating committee (2003-2005) , and then to the Board of directors (2009-2013). I am currently on the Nominating Committee for CAMWS. I believe that my work on the boards of several journals has equipped me for the kind of intensive reading and teamwork required of the program committee. In addition to serving on Viator (1995-8) and Classical Antiquity (1998-2000), I was the editor in charge of all Latin literature submissions for the American Journal of Philology (2000-2007) at the same time as I was chair at the University of Wisconsin Madison. That experience taught me how to stay organized and also how to work well with others. I very much enjoyed the process of reading new work, selecting referees, and consulting with the editor in chief at the time, Barbara Gold. I also regularly referee for journals and for external and internal fellowship funding bodies.

Three Representative Publications

  • Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (Cornell University Press 1995)
  • Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Empire (Cambridge University Press 2002)
  • Ovid: an Introduction (IB Tauris: 2015).

CV

I began my academic career at Cornell University (1984-8); then taught for several years at UCLA (1988-2000) where I was tenured. I then joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin Madison where I served for a while as chair. Since 2009 I have taught at the University of Colorado Boulder. I have held research fellowships at Clare Hall Cambridge, the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, and the Centre for Humanities, Australia National University, and I have received fellowships from the ACLS, NEH, and the Loeb Classical Library Foundation. My research interests include classical and medieval Latin literature, especially poetry, and cultural and reception studies. I have published many articles on classical and medieval topics, and, in addition to the books listed as representative, I have authored A Commentary on Statius Silvae Book 2 (Cambridge University Press 2011) and Statius: a Poet between Rome and Naples (Bristol Classical Press 2012). I was also a co-editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Handbook to the Reception of Ovid (2014); The Brill Companion to Statius (2015); and Ancient Campania (Illinois 2015). I am currently writing a monograph on the formative role that translation of the Classics played in Scottish culture from the early modern period to the present.

My CV can be found at https://www.colorado.edu/classics

Junior Financial Trustee

Laura McClure

Ph.D., Classical Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, 1991. M.A., Classical Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, 1986.

Mellon Morgridge Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics

Statement

It goes without saying that maintaining the strength of our professional associations is vital to the vitality of the study of classical antiquity both in the U.S. and abroad. Oversight of the Society’s annual budgets and its investments is critical to ensuring that the SCS remains on secure financial footing and can continue to support classical studies through robust annual meetings, publications, and public outreach. As a member of the Finance Committee, the Junior Financial Trustee works closely with the Senior Financial Trustee, the Executive Director and the Board of Directors to monitor the Society’s bank accounts and invested funds. Although much of this work occurs behind-the-scenes, it is the sine qua non upon which our future is predicated.

Qualifications and Experience

My professional service for SCS is extensive. I have been on the Nominating Committee (2009-2012) and the Board of Directors (2014-2017) as a Member at Large. In the latter capacity, I served as the liaison to the Contingent Faculty Advisory Group, which is now a permanent standing SCS committee. It also acquainted me with the SCS financial statements, which the board reviews biannually. My finance experience further includes managing departmental budgets during a period of steep cuts as chair of the Classics Department at the University of Wisconsin (2006-2014). Currently, I am a member of the ad hoc SCS Sesquicentennial Committee.

Three Representative Publications

  • Women in Classical Antiquity: From Birth to Death, forthcoming, Wiley-Blackwell, 2018.
  • Courtesans at Table: Gender and Greek Literary Culture in Athenaeus, Routledge, 2003.
  • Spoken Like a Woman: Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama, Princeton, 1999

CV: https://canes.wisc.edu/faculty/laura-mcclure

Lee Pearcy

M.A. Columbia University 1971; Ph.D. Bryn Mawr College 1974

Research Associate - Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies - Bryn Mawr College

Statement

When the SCS wants to undertake a new initiative or wonders whether some present activity is worth continuing, the question is likely to come before the Finance Committee at some point. As a Financial Trustee, I will hope to balance the imperative necessity for fiscal responsibility and prudence with the principle that budget and endowment are the servants of policy, not their masters.

Qualifications and Experience

As department chair, leader of a multi-year Middle States accreditation process, and Director of Curriculum at the Episcopal Academy, a large, PK­–12 independent school, I learned that intentional relationships between long-range, strategic planning and financial policy, and between short-term, academic program needs and annual budgeting, are essential to an institution’s success. As Vice-President for Education of the then APA and as President (twice) of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, I came to understand the many factors affecting the operation and success of a professional association in our field. During my service as interim President of CAAS in 2016, I met regularly with the association’s financial advisers and accountants and took part in decisions about endowment management, budgeting, and non-profit tax status. I understand the responsibilities and challenges of serving on the SCS Board of Directors and look forward to doing so.

Three Representative Publications

  • The Grammar of Our Civility (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2005)
  • “Does Dying Hurt? Philodemus of Gadara De Morte and Asclepiades of Bithynia,” Classical Quarterly 62.1(2012), 211–222.
  • “Grecian Theatre in Philadelphia, 1800-1870,” in The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas, edd. †K. Bosher, F. Macintosh, J. McConnell, and P. Rankine. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015), 53-69.

CV: https://brynmawr.academia.edu/LeePearcy

Committee on Professional Ethics

Kathleen Coleman

D.Phil. University of Oxford, 1979

James Loeb Professor of the Classics, Harvard University

Statement

If I am elected to the Committee on Professional Ethics, I am prepared to spend whatever time it takes to consider issues thoroughly and fairly, and contribute to their resolution in a manner befitting the highest ethical standards of the profession that our Society represents.

Qualifications and Experience

Two experiences above all have made me think hard about our responsibility to hold ourselves and others to ethical standards. Soon after I joined the Harvard faculty, I served for a year on the Administrative Board, which is the disciplinary body of Harvard College. It is probably the single most valuable experience I have had in my teaching career. Classics students tend to be studious and circumspect, so I had little idea of the traumas in which many undergraduates are involved. A lot of the cases were very difficult to adjudicate, and the need to establish careful procedures and abide by them became very apparent to me. My other formative experience in dealing with ethical matters was a serious case of plagiarism that the Board of Directors of the APA (as it then was) had to handle when I was President in 2011. As I discovered, feeling moral outrage at a breach of professional conduct is easy, but assembling the evidence and maintaining the highest standards of integrity in pursuing the case takes careful deliberation and a lot of work by a lot of people. I am glad to say that in my various other roles in the APA/SCS (serving on committees for Publication, Research, TLL Fellowship, and Membership), ethical issues have not been so prominent; but because ethics are synonymous with professional conduct, ethical questions are latent in much—perhaps all—of what we do and can take us unawares. And when they arise, we cannot drag our feet or look the other way.

Three Representative Publications

  • Statius, Siluae IV: Text, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988
  • Martial, Liber Spectaculorum: Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford University Press, 2006
  • “Bureaucratic language in the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 142.2 (2012), 189–238

CV: https://scholar.harvard.edu/kcoleman/home

Lesley Dean-Jones

Ph.D. Stanford University

Associate Professor and Chair, The University of Texas at Austin

Statement

I was a member of the forerunner to this Committee when it was first instituted as The Committee on Professional Matters in 1997-99. I found the work extremely rewarding. Since then I have served in my Department as Undergraduate and Graduate Advisor and now Chair. In all those positions I have had to deal with the resolution of greater or lesser conflicts and I have found it the most satisfying and most important part of my job. I believe that often in a conflict the greatest sense of grievance arises from imputed motives as much as from the facts of the case itself, and I would hope to bring to bear my experience that whatever the merits of each case are, very rarely is either side motivated by malice or entitlement. I consider this a very important perspective when so many cases brought before bodies such as the Committee on Professional Ethics involve individuals or groups from different backgrounds and different statuses with the profession.

Three Representative Publications

  • Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
  • Ancient Concepts of the Hippocratic. Proceedings of the XIIIth Colloquium Hippocraticum, August 11th-13th 2008, Austin, Texas, joint edited with Ralph Rosen (Leiden: Brill, 2015)
  • Historia Animalium X: Aristotle’s Endoxon, Tοpos and Dialectic on Ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ γεννᾶν, Translation, Introduction & Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

CV: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/classics/faculty/lesleydj

Program Committee

Johanna Hanink

MA, University of California, Berkeley; MPhil, University of Cambridge; PhD, University of Cambridge

Associate Professor of Classics, Brown University

Statement

As a member of the program committee, I would continue efforts to diversify the annual meeting program in terms of participants, types of activities, and content. I would like to restore some emphasis to the intensive workshop format and encourage lightning panels (short papers that, in TED style, are not read from scripts). I enjoyed participating in the special panel put together by the program committee in 2018, and would like to organize other such ‘plenary’ panels at future meetings. Finally, I would like to consider adding more options for structured, alcohol-free socializing at the conference, and would not be entirely closed to the idea of instituting a daunce at the end.

Experience and Qualifications

I have been attending SCS meetings for nearly fifteen years (since 2004). I am a regular contributor to and member of the editorial board of Eidolon, and so have a broad sense of current trends (and concerns) in the field. I helped the Women’s Classical Caucus to organize their mentorship program at the 2018 meeting in Boston. I have refereed more than twenty articles, book proposals, and book manuscripts for journals and presses.

Three Representative Publications

  • The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity. Harvard University Press, 2017.
  • (Co-edited with Richard Fletcher) Creative Lives in Classical Antiquity: Poets, Artists and Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
  • Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

CV: https://vivo.brown.edu/display/jhanink

Tim Power

PhD: Harvard 2001

Associate Professor, Classics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Statement

The programs of the last several annual meetings have been more vital than any I can recall since I began attending meetings in 1999. Their success has been owed, it seems to me, not only to the diversity of topics and perspectives, but also to the rich variety of session formats. If elected to the program committee, I’ll work to maintain this variety and to promote new formats. I’m especially eager to track the progress of the lightning talks, which promise to provide a forum for stimulating ideas that might not otherwise find expression in the existing sessions.

In recent years, the program committee has shown commitments both to showcasing important scholarship and to facilitating discussions about the integrity, self-accountability, and sustainability of the discipline itself. As a member of the committee, I’ll aim to further these commitments on both sides. I would also like to see more focus on the financial challenges facing many Classics departments, students, and professionals in a society and university culture increasingly indifferent to the humanities.

Experience and Qualifications

Though I have no prior SCS service and only some experience evaluating conference abstracts, what I lack in concrete qualifications I hope to make up for in my eagerness to keep the annual programs engaging, inclusive, and relevant.

Three Representative Publications

  • “The Parthenoi of Bacchylides 13,” HSCP 100 (2000), 67–81
  • “Cyberchorus: Pindar's Keledones and the Aura of the Artificial,” in Archaic and Classical Choral Song: Performance, Politics and Dissemination, eds. L. Athanassaki and E. Bowie (De Gruyter, 2011), 67–114
  • “The Sound of the Sacred,” forthcoming in Sound and the Ancient Senses, eds. S. Butler and S. Nooter (Routledge)

CV: https://classics.rutgers.edu/people/faculty/85-people-timothy-power

Board of Directors

Anthony Corbeill

University of California, Berkeley (M.A., Greek Literature 1985); University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D., Classics 1990)

Basil L. Gildersleeve Professor of Classics, University of Virginia

Statement

Since the SCS Board of Directors acts largely in a supervisory capacity, my contribution would be supporting and helping to guide the ongoing efforts of my colleagues in the Society. Recent initiatives that have come to the Board's attention that I find particularly relevant are the statement on the use of ideas and images from the Greek and Roman worlds to promote modern agendas of exclusion and intolerance, or the new guidelines on professional ethics. Both initiatives show the society engaging with contemporary concerns. At the same time, the Board needs to continue its commitment to ensuring the continued rigor of our profession, where the most urgent issue is the proliferation of non-tenure track positions in the academy. The challenge, in other words, is not only to stay relevant but also to stay afloat.

Experience and Qualifications

Two service positions in particular provide qualifications for sitting on the Board of Directors. The first would be my term as Chair for the SCS/APA Committee that is charged annually with choosing a Fellow to the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich. This duty included conveying the importance of the specialized philological endeavor practiced at ThLL to the broader audience of humanists representing the National Endowment for the Humanities, a duty that became increasingly challenging as the NEH faced its own budget cuts. I attempted to play an analogous role as a spokesperson for Classics during a recent three-year stint as Trustee to the American Academy in Rome (representing the Advisory Council of the School for Classical Studies). My tenure as Trustee taught me ways of supporting the study of Classics to a large body of individuals who represent more highly profiled areas of the humanities and arts.

Three Representative Publications

  • Sexing the World: Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex in Ancient Rome. Princeton: Princeton UP 2015.
  • Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004.
  • Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996.

CV: https://virginia.academia.edu/AnthonyCorbeill/CurriculumVitae

Robin Mitchell-Boyask

Ph.D. Brown University, 1988

Professor of Classics and Department Chair, Temple University

Statement

The function of the Board of Directors is to provide stable, ongoing leadership for the SCS. Ideally, that group should come from a range of types of institutions, so that the broader concerns and differing needs of the membership are represented. As with any collective, a diverse range of opinions, experiences and perspectives is more likely to lead to productive decision-making. I would contribute to the Board the perspective of someone who has, for his entire teaching career, worked in and often run a department, without any graduate program, at a non-elite, public university that is located in a poor part of Philadelphia and that has experienced regular budget crises. My outlook on the Society and the profession has been shaped by my own survival of the employment crisis of the early 1990s and by my service as a department chair for now roughly half of my career, as I gradually built a department that was then needlessly plunged into grave danger earlier in this decade. As a chair and a member of my department’s leadership when I haven’t been chair, I have annually seen an average of one young faculty member come and go since the century began, and these experiences have taught me what life is now like for many younger members of the field, as well as just how fragile success can be. My primary goal on the Board of Directors would be to increase dialogue across the profession in several areas, mainly between generations and between graduate programs and the departments who hire their students. An additional area of dialogue I would address more is that between the SCS and the broader public. Last, I hope to help contribute actively to the discussion what time of year is best for the annual meeting out of the winter months, a discussion which is long overdue.

Experience and Qualifications

I recognize the importance of service, and I enjoy holding responsibility. As noted above, I have been a department chair for roughly half of my career. I have also had the opportunity to teach regularly in Bryn Mawr’s graduate program, which has given me a better understanding of the circumstances of graduate education today. I have been co-editor, and now am sole editor, of a scholarly journal, Classical World, for five years. I have significant, wide-ranging experience serving the APA/SCS: Local Co-chair for the 2012 and 2009 APA Annual Meetings in Philadelphia; APA Nominating Committee, 2008-11; APA Task Force on Electronic Publication, 2005-07; APA Web Editor, 1998-2011; APA Placement Committee, 1995-1998; APA Committee on the Classical Tradition, 1992-95; speaker in Presidential Forum, 1992 APA Annual Meeting “Prospects for Younger Classicists: What Can the APA do to Help?”

Three Representative Publications

  • Plague and the Athenian Imagination: Drama, History, and the Cult of Asclepius (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
  • “The Marriage of Cassandra and the Oresteia: Text, Image, Performance,” TAPA 136 (2006) 269-297
  • “Sine Fine: The Aeneid and Freud’s Masterplot,” AJP 117 (1996) 289-307.

CV: http://www.cla.temple.edu/classics/faculty/robin-mitchell-boyask/

Nigel Nicholson

Walter Mintz Professor of Classics and Dean of the Faculty, Reed College

Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1994

Statement

Part of the responsibility of the directors is to support the projects of the different committees, but, over and above that, my goal in this position would be to ensure that the interests of undergraduate education, and of those of us who dedicate our careers to teaching undergraduates, are properly represented in these projects and in the activity of the SCS as a whole. There is, I think, much to do to communicate the needs of undergraduate programs and make sure that undergraduate and graduate institutions work together well—something that the liberal arts college caucus and Sunoikisis, among others, are already pursuing within the SCS. Most pressing are issues around graduate preparation and employment: graduate programs, and graduate students, need a better understanding of what kind of preparation undergraduate programs are looking for when we hire; undergraduate programs need a clearer sense of what graduate programs are looking for in their applicants, as well as what preparation best sets up graduate students to finish swiftly and with a good chance of success; and we all need a more realistic and sympathetic idea of what graduate school should accomplish, and should calibrate our expectations of new hires and tenure candidates accordingly. Other areas for work include: continued creativity in thinking about supporting course development at the annual meeting; stronger support for curriculum redevelopment well before programs face budget pressure (e.g. around external program reviews, justifying curricula, articulating broad goals); and support and encouragement for faculty members so that they can engage successfully with deans and curricular committees, or serve in those roles themselves.

Experience and Qualifications

I would bring to this position nearly 25 years of experience at liberal arts colleges, a devotion to teaching undergraduates, and more than five years of service as a dean of faculty and vice president. Like many of us, I think deeply about undergraduate teaching—the classes I teach, the curriculum as a whole, the structures that promote or hinder it. Less typically, I have acquired a depth of administrative experience that most folks would never want: overseeing appointments and promotions in various fields; facilitating faculty development; curricular planning, program reviews and accreditation; managing large budgets; setting up faculty committees to be worthwhile and productive; adjudicating professional ethics complaints; complying with federal regulations; cultivating philanthropic foundations; and dealing with the press when the culture wars come to town. For the SCS, I have served a four-year stint on the Education Committee, as well as various tenures on its subcommittees, and have organized and participated in panels sponsored by SCS committees. I have also done a turn as President of the Classical Association of the Pacific Northwest, as well as four years as its Treasurer. I think of myself primarily as a teacher—I find the time to teach while serving as Dean of Faculty—and bring a commitment to undergraduate education to all my administrative responsibilities.

Three Representative Publications

  • The Poetics of Victory in the Greek West: Epinician, Oral Tradition and the Deinomenid Empire (Oxford University Press, 2016)
  • Aristocracy and Athletics in Archaic and Classical Greece (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
  • (editor) Literary Theory in Graduate and Undergraduate Classics Curricula, Paedagogus Special Section, Classical World 108.2 (2015), 157-279.

CV: https://www.reed.edu/dean_of_faculty/cv.html

Peter Struck

University of Chicago M.A. (1991), Ph.D. (1997)

Professor and Chair of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Statement

As a member of the SCS Board of Directors I would aim to contribute mainly in two areas. First, American classicists have a tradition of meeting the ongoing interest in our field among the general public. Hamilton, and Bullfinch before her, helped pave the way to popular audiences, and we now reach out with MOOCs, and other popular cultural forms. Our society can play a stronger role in acknowledging and supporting this work. Second, the opening up of scholarly connections to East Asia represents a promising opportunity to increase an audience for our field and to learn from new perspectives. Even less well-cultivated have been links to South Asia. There are new openings in both areas of the world. Our field has more potential than we have realized to contribute to, and to learn from, the breadth of insights that are increasingly accessible in a globalizing world.

Experience and Qualifications

In the SCS, I have served on the Goodwin Committee (2012 – 14) and chaired it in 2013 and 2014; performed the role of convener of an ad hoc group of chairs of PhD granting institutions (2016 – ); and served on the SCS Executive Director Search Committee (2015 – 16). I have been active in outreach in different formats in popular media, including MOOCs, for most of my career, and I have established research and teaching links between Penn and Yale-NUS in Singapore.

Three Representative Publications

  • Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004)
  • Cambridge Companion to Allegory, coedited with Rita Copeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
  • Divination and Human Nature: A Cognitive History of Intuition in Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, June 2016)

CV: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~struck/

Gareth Williams

Ph.D. Cambridge, 1990

Violin Family Professor of Classics, Columbia University

Statement

Since I have served only once on a committee within SCS (Publications), and since I have long benefited from the contributions made by others to the Society’s wellbeing, I stand for the Board of Directors (i) to give back by contributing what I can to the shared governance of the Society; (ii) to embrace to the best of my ability the duties incumbent on Directors, including serving on ad hoc committees as needed and participating in the first round of abstract review for the annual meeting; and (iii) to apply to the benefit of SCS the lessons learnt from much academic administration in my home institution. SCS is vitally concerned with the role and function of Classical Studies not just within the modern Humanities in complex college and university settings, but also within society at large. I see it as a responsibility of the modern Classicist actively to participate in this outreach effort to articulate our raison d’être, our goals in teaching and research, and our wider contribution to the cultural landscape. Beyond these ongoing challenges, I would wish, if elected: (i) to enhance the efforts already being made within SCS and other Humanities bodies to increase awareness, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, of career opportunities outside the academy; (ii) for SCS to intensify efforts to build for the future through strategies (e.g., targeted fund-raising, more panel opportunities at the annual meeting, redoubled commitment to diversity initiatives) that would foster connection with Classical students at the high-school and undergraduate levels, and also promote the visibility of Classics in core-based college-level Humanities teaching; and (iii) in a globalizing world, for SCS to forge links with institutions in China and elsewhere that are themselves increasingly engaging with cross-comparative approaches to the study of the ancient world. SCS has already made positive strides in this direction (see, e.g., the blogs of August 14th, 2017 and October 23rd, 2017), but great opportunity exists for the Society to expand our discipline outwards by promoting collaborative projects with scholars in China and elsewhere.

Experience and Qualifications

Beyond my background as a committed researcher and educator at the undergraduate and graduate levels, I bring to my candidacy many years of collaborative service in different editorial roles (Associate Editor of the American Journal of Philology; Book Reviews editor, Classical World; Classics Editor-in-Chief, Oxford Handbooks Online); long experience of faculty governance and advisory committees at my home institution, with multi-year stints of chairing at both the departmental level and in Columbia’s undergraduate core curriculum; and extensive involvement in outreach programs at Columbia and elsewhere that are aimed at promoting the Humanities among audiences beyond the Academy.

Three Representative Publications

  • Pietro Bembo on Etna: The Ascent of a Venetian Humanist (Oxford, 2017)
  • The Cosmic Viewpoint: A Study of Seneca’s Natural Questions (Oxford, 2012)
  • L. Annaeus Seneca: Selected Moral Dialogues. De Otio, De Brevitate Vitae (Cambridge, 2003)

CV: classics.columbia.edu/gareth-williams/

Goodwin Award Committee

Luca Grillo

Associate Professor of Classics and William R. Kenan, Jr. Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (until June 2018) and about to join Classics at the University of Notre Dame, as Associate Professor.

Statement

I utterly enjoy reading broadly and discussing new books. I would be delighted to join the other scholars who are currently part of the committee and hope to be able to bring my interests and expertise and keep the high standards of the Goodwin Award.

Experience and Qualifications

I was educated broadly and internationally: BA in Literature and Philosophy from Milan, Italy, MAs in Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota (2001-03) and, having begun my PhD at Princeton as a Hellenist, I ended up working mostly on Latin prose (2003-08). My experience with SCS includes presenting papers, organizing panels and serving as member of the Outreach Committee.

Three Representative Publications

  • The Art of Caesar’s Bellum Civile, (CUP 2012, paperback 2015)
  • Cicero De Provinciis Consularibus Oratio (OUP, American Philological Association 2015)
  • The Cambridge Companion to the Writings of Julius Caesar (CUP 2018, edited with Christopher Krebs)

CV: https://classics.unc.edu/people-3/faculty/luca-grillo/

Noel Lenski

M.A./Ph.D. Princeton 1995

Professor of Classics and History, Yale University

Statement

It was wise of the SCS to begin awarding the Goodwin Prize to three books annually. Not only does this permit the organization to keep up with increases in the pace of publication, it also allows the committee to take full account of the breadth of the field. If elected, I would hope to apply my experience as a historian and my expertise with authors stretching from Homer to Anna Komnēnē as well as my familiarity with texts, coins, inscriptions, and art objects to the process of identifying outstanding work in the expansive field of Classics.

Experience and Qualifications

Prior experience could help me manage the important task of reading and selecting field-changing work. I have served on book and dissertation prize committees and have been managing editor of a major journal, opportunities that prepared me to think objectively about the qualities that constitute excellence in scholarship. My hope would be to identify those books that offer that rare combination of originality and meticulousness so as to make lasting contributions within the field of Classics and beyond it.

Three Representative Publications

  • Failure of Empire: Valens and the Roman State In the Fourth Century AD (University of California Press 2002)
  • The Romans: From Village to Empire, second edition (Oxford University Press, 2011) (co-authored with M.T. Boatwright, D. Gargola, and R. Talbert)
  • Constantine and the Cities: Imperial Authority and Civic Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press 2016).

My research focuses on power relations in ancient history, particularly in Late Antiquity. I have explored all levels of the social hierarchy, from emperors to slaves, and have written on a variety of topics including law, politics, numismatics, art, architecture, religion, women’s history, regional history, and sectarian violence. Current research includes projects on ancient refugees, the comparative history of slavery, and the translation of late Roman legal codes. See further details on my CV.

CV: here

David Konstan

M.A. (1963) and Ph.D. (1967), Columbia University

Professor of Classics, New York University

Statement

If elected, I expect to read carefully all the books nominated for the Goodwin Award, and hope to be able to discriminate fairly among the many excellent volumes that are submitted.

Experience and Qualifications

My prior service to the profession includes holding several offices in the APA/SCS, including member of the Goodwin Award Committee; I also served at different times as president of the APA (1999) and Vice President for Academic Affairs. Beyond that, I am on the editorial boards of several journals and book series, as a result of which I have acquired some experience in evaluating manuscripts.

Three Representative Qualifications

  • The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006 (winner of the Goodwin Award in 2008)
  • Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010
  • Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014

CV: https://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/faculty/david-konstan.html

Jim Porter

B.A.: Swarthmore College; M.A. and Ph.D.: UC Berkeley

Chancellor’s Professor in Rhetoric and Classics, University of California at Berkeley

Statement

As a recipient of the Goodwin Award in 2017, I know how meaningful it is to learn that five people besides yourself have made it past the preface to your own book. I read widely and without much regard to disciplinary limits, and am always glad to see how classicists continue to push at the boundaries within the many vibrant fields of Classics. My own teaching and research are marked by a deep respect for philological traditions and by a desire to respond to ancient texts from the perspective of the historical moment that I inhabit. I regularly vet manuscripts for major academic presses in Classics and in related disciplines, in addition to “Classical Presences” (OUP), a book series in classical reception, of which I am founding co-editor (with Lorna Hardwick). It would be a pleasure and an honor to serve on the Goodwin Award of Merit Committee.

Three Representative Publications

  • The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece: Matter, Sensation, and Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
  • The Sublime in Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
  • Homer: The Very Idea (University of Chicago Press, under contract)

CV: https://rhetoric.berkeley.edu/faculty-profile/james-i-porter-1 and at https://berkeley.academia.edu/JamesIPorter

Nominating Committee

Laurel Fulkerson

MA/PhD Columbia University, 1995/2000

Associate Dean and Professor of Classics, the Florida State University

Statement

The nominating committee in particular has the opportunity as well as the responsibility to ensure that SCS leadership represents the diversity in the profession as a whole. Institutional constraints and the new realities of the academy mean that there are fewer professional classicists, but also that many of them are at small schools, or are part of a cluster in a larger department (e.g. languages or history). If elected, I would make a special effort to enlist individuals from such places, who are slowly but surely becoming a majority – as well as to continue the recent trend of seeking candidates among the contingent non-tenure track faculty and among secondary school teachers.

Experience and Qualifications

I know many people in the profession, across disciplines and many geographical areas, and I have made a special effort to get to know those entering the profession. In addition, my role as an associate dean has given me a different and perhaps broader perspective about some of the issues facing classics and the humanities as a whole. SCS service: publications and research, 2014-18; excellence in teaching award, 2016-19; Florida legate, 2017-20.

Three Representative Publications

  • The Ovidian Heroine as Author, CUP 2005.
  • No Regrets: Remorse in Classical Antiquity, OUP 2013.
  • A Literary Commentary on the Elegies of the Appendix Tibulliana, OUP 2017.

CV: Laurel Fulkerson received all of her degrees from Columbia University (BA in Classics, MA in Latin, M.Phil. in Classics, Ph.D. in Classics), and has been a faculty member in the Classics department at the Florida State University in Tallahassee since 2000. Her scholarly work within Classics focuses on three basic areas: Latin poetry; ancient women’s history and gender studies; and the emotions in antiquity. She has written or edited the following books: The Ovidian Heroine as Author: Reading, Writing, and Community in the Heroides (2005, Cambridge University Press); No Regrets: Remorse in Classical Antiquity (2013, Oxford University Press); Emotions between Greece and Rome, co-edited with Douglas Cairns (2015, BICS Supplement); Ovid: A Poet on the Margins (2016, Bloomsbury); Repeat Performances: Ovidian Repetition and the Metamorphoses, co-edited with Tim Stover (2016, University of Wisconsin Press); and A Literary Commentary on the Elegies of the Appendix Tibulliana (2017, Oxford University Press). She is currently co-authoring a history of Latin literature of the second and first centuries BCE and a commentary on the pseudo-Vergilian Ciris. She edited The Classical Journal, a leading journal in her field, from 2010-2016, and she has won graduate and undergraduate teaching awards at national and University levels.

In 2015 Fulkerson became an Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Florida State University. Among her duties are: running the College’s Teaching Postdoctoral program, participating in faculty recruiting and annual evaluations, managing graduate and undergraduate enrollments and graduate recruiting, working with partners across campus to develop and improve diversity and bridge programs, facilitating curricular development and approving all new and continuing courses within the College, coordinating cost-sharing on faculty grant and fellowship applications, and managing the budgets for College distance learning courses. She is particularly proud of these accomplishments: organizing writing groups for women and faculty of color, working with the College’s donor board and department chairs to rethink alumni relations and development, and reorganizing the College’s communications and media division. She is also a team member of the University’s Strategic Plan Implementation Committees for Diversity and for Career Success, and co-leader of a sub-team which will focus on curricular and extra-curricular programs to increase and promote diversity and inclusion.

Travel and social justice are both very important to Laurel: she has visited over fifty countries, and she currently serves as a Trainer and a member of the Critical Incident First Response Team for FSU’s chapter of the National Coalition Building Institute (ncbi.org). In this role she leads workshops for faculty, students and staff on prejudice reduction, diversity and inclusion, and teaches practical skills for community-building and for engaging in conversation with those with whom we disagree.

Kenneth Morrell

A.B. Stanford University, Classics, A.B. German Studies, 1982 (with Distinction); M.A. Harvard University, Classical Philology, 1985; Ph.D. Harvard University, Classical Philology, 1989.

Assistant professor, St. Olaf College, 1989-1993; Assistant professor, Rhodes College, 1993-1997; Associate professor, 1997-present.

Statement

For most of my career in the field, I have been involved in projects committed to expanding the reach of our discipline and strengthening programs in classics through collaborative initiatives, most importantly the Sunoikisis project. These have provided opportunities to meet and work with hundreds of colleagues in as many institutions, large and small, and I can attest that over the years the leadership of the SCS as accomplished, talented, and committed as it has been has not reflected the diversity of those engaged in the pursuit of classical studies. I have accepted this nomination in the hope of helping the SCS identify and recruit members of our organization from more diverse backgrounds, interests, and professional affiliations, who can, in turn, serve as leaders and develop a wider, more robust following for our discipline both within and beyond academia.

Experience and Qualifications

Pearson Fellowship Committee, 2002-2005; chair, 2003-2005.

Three Representative Publications

  • “The Classics Major and Liberal Education,” Liberal Education 95 (2009): 14-21
  • “Sunoikisis: Computer-Mediated Communication in the Creation of a Virtual Department,” CALICO Journal 18 (2001): 223-234
  • “The Fabric of Persuasion: Clytaemnestra, Agamemnon, and the Sea of Garments.” The Classical Journal 92 (1997): 141-65.

https://www.rhodes.edu/bio/morrell

CV: https://zetesis.org/wp1/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/KSM.CV_.pdf

Celia Schultz

1992 B.A., with high distinction and honors in Classics, The Pennsylvania State University; 1994 M.A. in Latin, Bryn Mawr College; 1999; Ph.D. in Latin, Bryn Mawr College

Professor of Classical Studies, University of Michigan

Statement

The Nominating Committee has the power to make Classics a more inclusive discipline. If elected to serve, I will strive to improve the diversity of the SCS administration by increasing the presence – in both appointed positions, where many of us get our start, and on the ballot – of those employed at M.A.-granting universities, four-year colleges, community colleges, and high schools. We need to expand the pipeline of experienced candidates for elected offices. I will also work to increase the Committee’s outreach to make more members aware of opportunities to participate in the organization in an official capacity. There is a lot of energy and creativity among the membership; we should find a way to tap into more of it.

Experience and Qualifications

I have spent a lot of time on committees within the SCS (Ancient History; CSWMG and its successor, the Committee on Gender and Sexuality in the Profession, known as COGSIP; and in an ex officio capacity, Placement and Professional Matters) and other organizations like the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religion. This has given me insight into how the SCS operates and some ideas about how we can improve the service we provide to our members. I am interested in finding ways to increase conversation between groups within the SCS that do not usually talk to one another, hence my simultaneous stints on the now-defunct Committee on Ancient History and the Women’s Classical Caucus Steering Committee that resulted in a jointly sponsored panel on the underrepresentation of women in the field of ancient history. The Nominating Committee might further this goal with increased attention to the range of subfields represented on some committees, especially those dealing with professional issues. I also hope to find ways for the SCS to get to know its membership better. As Chair of COGSIP, I successfully pushed for increased demographic data-gathering so that the SCS, including the Nominating Committee, can improve its response to the interests of the membership, both in terms of intellectual content and professional issues.

Representative Publications

  • A Commentary on Cicero's De Divinatione, Book I, University of Michigan Press, 2014.
  • Women’s Religious Activity in the Roman Republic, in the series Studies in Greek and Roman History, University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

CV: https://lsa.umich.edu/classics/people/departmental-faculty/celiaes

Alden Smith

Ph.D. Pennsylvania, 1990; M.A. Vermont, 1983

Professor and Chair of Classics at Baylor University; Associate Dean of the Honors College.

Statement

The challenges that our profession faces have in recent years come front and center: jobs, our standing within the academy, and the survivability of our discipline. This committee’s task will be, in my mind, to proffer the names of those who can best address these issues. Too often college and university administrations seek to eliminate or trim existing Classics programs. The SCS leadership must address this issue not only reactively but, insofar as possible, proactively. Bridges must be built with regional organizations eager for stronger alliances. We need to elect leaders who can safeguard our profession’s status in the academy not only through the promotion of scholarship but also teaching, community outreach, and fundraising. Such a comprehensive approach can obviously dovetail with the issue of jobs, as we help recent PhDs transition into the workforce, whether in the academy as a post-doc, lecturer, assistant professor, or outside the academy proper, in positions such as non-profit administrator, or as a savvy and well-read businessman or –woman. This all begins with nominating the right people for SCS offices, which I will seek to do in serving on this committee.

Experience and Qualifications

I have served in a variety of administrative roles at Baylor and as president of two classical organizations. In serving in these capacities I have garnered some awareness of the pitfalls of not having the right people in the right positions. As a member for the Nominating Committee, I will try to help find the right person for the right position.

Three Representative Publications

  • The Primacy of Vision in Virgil’s Aeneid (Texas, 2005)
  • co-author with Lee Fratantuono, Aeneid 5: Text, Translation and Commentary (Brill, 2017)
  • Classics from Papyrus to the Internet: An Introduction to Transmission and Reception (University of Texas Press, 2017) co-authored with Jeffrey M. Hunt and Fabio Stok, with a foreword by Craig W. Kallendorf.

CV: https://www.baylor.edu/classics/doc.php/257352.pdf